A Queens jury yesterday cleared an NYU surgeon of malpractice for unwittingly transplanting a kidney from a woman with uterine cancer into his patient.

Kimberly Liew, whose husband developed cancer after receiving the transplant and died in 2003 as a result, was seeking $3 million for Victor Liew’s pain and suffering.

It took the jury in Queens Supreme Court five hours to exonerate transplant surgeon Thomas Diflo, who testified that Victor Liew insisted on keeping the kidney despite the cancer risk.

The central question put to the jury was whether Diflo “deviated from accepted medical practice” in treating Victor Liew, which was answered with a unanimous “No.”

“It was a very difficult decision,” said one juror, who declined to give her name.

“It was based on what we heard,” said another.

Kimberly Liew testified her husband wanted the kidney removed immediately, but Diflo reassured her husband that the risk of contracting cancer was miniscule.

Two other people who received organs from the same donor developed cancer and died, Liew’s lawyer, Daniel Buttafuoco, said after the verdict, noting that those victims’ families received “significant” settlements from the New York Organ Donor Network, which coordinates transplants.

But the lawyer who filed Liew’s initial suit in 2004 did not sue the donor network or the hospital where the kidney was removed, and the statute of limitations has since expired, Buttafuoco said.

“We did what we could with what we had,” Buttafuoco said.

Liew was sanguine after the verdict that ended any chance she had to recover damages.

“I feel peaceful,” she said. “It’s very important for the world to know what happened to him. Hopefully, it will save lives.”

Buttafuoco said medical privacy laws led to a delay in notifying NYU that the kidney donor had cancer — she died of a stroke — and hampered his lawsuit, as well.

He said a waiver of privacy laws “should be part of the donation process.”

NYU’s lawyer, Robert Elliott, said Diflo, “did more than his due diligence” when assessing Victor Liew’s condition.